HEEL…

Now that Russia has a president, and one with energy and a sense of order, regional leaders could see their power trimmed. Several ideas are in circulation. Moscow Mayor Yuri Luzhkov is the latest convert to a plan to superimpose twelve to fifteen federal districts on Russia’s eighty-nine regions and place a presidential appointee, like a Tsarist governor-general, in each district. The appointee would administer all federal agencies and programs in the district and could therefore marshal more resources, dispense more benefits and mete out more punishment, than all but a few regional executives…. Another plan would change representation in the Federation Council, where the heads of each region’s executive and legislative branches now sit as members of the upper house of Russia’s parliament. The constitution places regional representatives in the Federation Council but does not specify that they be governors or speakers. Getting these top officials out of the federal parliament would diminish their prestige and, more pointedly, end their immunity from criminal prosecution.